Don't Know How to Start Making Money with Hubpages? Forget the Myths!

Making Money with Hubpages is not a Myth

I believe it is much more pleasant to enjoy one's hobby if it brings in some extra cash. There's nothing wrong with it: anyway, collectors of fountain pens exchange their writing instruments, write reviews, share tips and teach others the art of calligraphy. Stamp and cork collectors create photo albums, sell excess of items and publish books.

Making money with Hubpages is the other side of the hobby medal. On the one hand, you write because you love to and want to share your experience, on the other hand your writing turns the income-creating wheels of the Internet. There's no contradiction between writing for fun and earning a little extra cash.

If you decided to try out Hubpages network and feel like several hundreds $/month would make you happier, then here's the 1st lesson of Successful Hubbing: Unveiling Myths.

Earning AdSense money with Hubpages: April stats of two well-performing hubs

Myth 1: More Hubs = More Cash

Myth 1: to succeed with Hubpages as online income opportunity, one needs to publish a lot of hubs.

Truth: "a lot" is subjective. Is it 20 or 200? Do you believe that a hubber with 200 published hubs earns a lot more than a hubber with mere 20 hubs? Unfortunately, "more hubs" does not mean "more money". In fact, only quality hubs have great income potential, but to create a quality hub you need to spend hours of work, where writing itself is nothing but a part of the process. This means you cannot start churning out quality hubs en masse simply because of time constraint.

Myth 2: More Traffic = More Cash

Myth 2: Bring in as many visitors as you can, and you will succeed.

Truth: this is true, but only partially. Successful hubbers rely on Search Engines traffic in their monetization. But it doesn't come quick and in large quantities. For newbie hubbers it is common to go after "quick" traffic like that coming from Social Bookmarking services or forum spam. If you choose to go this way, please do not get disappointed with your Google AdSense account displaying 1000 impressions and 0 clicks. In the worst case, you may end with your AdSense account banned forever.

Myth 3: More Ads = More Cash

Myth 3: Some novices assume that the more ads they have in a hub, the more money they will be earning.

Truth: look at your hub from the point of view or a regular visitor. Do you like tons of ads with little to no content? I doubt. But it is not rare to come across a hub with some 200 words and dozens of amazon, eBay and AdSense ads. It is screaming in your face "buy something! click here! I NEED MONEY!" A hub is primarily about useful content, NOT about earning money. Content establishes your credibility as the author. If a reader finds what he or she has been looking for, there's a chance (s)he will become interested in ads. A hub stuffed with ads and only a tiny passage of text looks disgusting, and random visitors will quit asap.

Myth 4: Stolen Content

Myth 4: there's no need to write, just browse any article directory and you'll find lots of articles to throw into Hubpages.

Truth: it is an example of short-sighted approach which doesn't bring anything but rotten fruits. Copy-pasted articles have little chance of ranking high in Search Engines, and they will never stay there for a long time. Users of Social Bookmarking services are likely to flag such hubs (if you submit them) as non-original or stolen. Hubbers don't favor such hubs either.

Myth 5: Use of High-paying Keywords

Truth: Internet is full of circulating lists of Top Paying AdSense Keywords. Unfortunately, relying on such lists is a big mistake. You never know who, how and when created that list. What's more important, it's Adwords advertisers who decide how much to pay for ads and who create campaigns. They may or may not spread their campaigns onto Content Network which we all refer to as AdSense. They may set lower bids for AdSense than for Google Search Engine. Finally, nobody but Google decides how many cents each click gets. Thus picking up a keyword with a promised value of $5 per click often ends in $0.01 clicks. Pretty disappointing, right?

Consider the competition factor: using a high-paying keyword means competing with thousands, if not millions, websites. For a newbie, it's next to impossible to win the Search Engine game and reach the first page of Google (which traffic is most preferred because of its numbers and conversion rate).

Myth 6: It's Impossible to Earn with Hubs

Myth 6: It's just impossible to earn with Hubpages because they steal 40% of money!Truth: Hubpages implements an automatic system of splitting hub views (similar to "page impressions" in AdSense terminology).

AdSense insertion: with an ordinary HTML website you'd have to insert AdSense blocks into every page. Hubpages provides a single box to insert AdSense Publisher ID which is valid for any number of hubs created under same user profile.

Community help: whenever you have a question regarding hubs, SEO, promotion, traffic or specific advice, HP team and forum members are there to help you. Hubpages DOES NOT charge anything for the services. There's no such thing as "premium HP account".

Myth 7: It Doesn't Matter How a Hub Looks

Truth: poor grammar, tons of exclamation marks and loads of ads on a hubpage don't warm a visitor up to clicking/buying. It just makes sure the visitor will never come back. Poorly written hub cannot build credibility, it loses all SEO benefits and in fact just wastes server space.

A successful hubber aims at establishing credibility. It probably means losing a couple of clicks at the beginning, but it pays off in the long run. Hubbing means investing time and efforts into long-lasting success.

Myth 8: Backlinks are the Key!

Myth 8: Getting backlinks is the only sure-fire way to promoting a hub, and backlink-developing strategy guarantees success.

Truth: In my opinion, this is an example of "half-truth" which is more misleading than a blatant lie.

Why? Because generating backlinks quite easily leads to getting them anywhere, no matter what. This is especially dangerous for novices because such approach spoils the concept of SE-friendly promotion.

Much better results are achieved when active backlinking goes hand in hand with proper On-page optimization. Quality content, also known at Hubpages as "evergreen", is the first step to effective promotion because it ensures readers will get interested in reading and will want to link to the hub they liked. Fellow hubbers know that this strategy works slowly, but brings ripe fruits over the course of time. It is a lot easier to work on promotion when part of it is done by readers. Their volunteer commitment facilitates the task for a hubber. The more backlinks are generated by hub readers, the less the hub owner will have to develop on his/her own.

And it is much easier to get people link back to an "evergreen" hub.

Myth 9: More Tags = Better SEO = More Traffic

Myth 9: when tagging a hub, the golden rule is to add as many tags as possible.

Truth: this probably works as a Blackhat SEO trick. However, being on the Whitehat side because I don't like struggling with ever changing Google algorithms, I stick to relevancy rather than quantity.

Here's how it works: as outlined above, a hub should be specific. So, "earning money online" is a very broad key phrase, and thus it's easy to pick up half a hundred tags to describe it. Instead, I suggest narrowing the topic, e.g. to "earning money using affiliate programs". It's even better to specify a concrete program or network. Creating a list of tags this way is a bit harder, but the resulting tags will be targeted and up to the point. For example: "affiliate wealth", "successful affiliate marketing", "clickbank", "regnow", etc. I know these example tags aren't superb and I do not suggest using them all at once, but they give you a clue as to how organize the process of choosing tags.

Tip: try to include in the body of the hub every tag listed in the corresponding column, possibly bolding/underlining each one. This makes the tag list relevant to the hub and assures Search Engines that you are not into spam. Of course if you prefer to build up a list of 100 tags, bolding all of them is not recommended. I prefer to include into my tag list about 10-20 items.

Strange but true .Very valid observations and I guess you are right in more ways than one.

Quality scores over quantity any day. Quality will beget visitors, maybe late than never.

Thanks for opening our eyes to the truth.

Bookmarked voted up and awesome .

Sam Kear 5 years agofrom Kansas City

Great tips, especially number 1! I would rather have 100 high quality hubs than a thousand poor hubs.

Brett Caulton 6 years agofrom Thailand

You make some very valid points, especially for new hubbers. Voted up and useful

Barbara Radisavljevic 6 years agofrom Templeton, CA

I never expected to get rich writing on line. I am hoping to build up enough quality hubs and lenses to supply residual income during lean months. i"d be really happy if I could get to $100 a month I do know others who are making much more than that, mostly on Squidoo, because it's easier to make affiliate income there with Zazzle. That's one reason I write more on Squidoo than here. It's easier to use topical Zazzle products for illustrations and the occasional sale when someone likes one. That said, I normally read for content, and I skip a lot of lenses on Squidoo that are primarily geared to make sales because I'm not shopping.OTOH my lensmaster friends who write a lot of sales lenses do make sales and their income is a lot higher than I make on my lenses that are focused on only content with only an occasional product advertised that would be useful to someone interested in the topic. Either way, though, I believe good writing is imperative.

TopUniverse 6 years ago

Great hub, it cleared lot of questions that i have in my mind.

carolapple 6 years agofrom Suffolk Virginia

Thank you for the valuable tips. As I am relatively new to web writing, I appreciate the dose of reality. I especially like Myth #1 - about the importance of quality rather than quantity.

harrison8bal 6 years agofrom Shanghai

Great tips, thanks for letting me know :D

Jason 6 years agofrom Jamestown TN

Thank you for the very helpful information.

Jamie Brock 6 years agofrom Texas

Love this.. thank you for sharing :0)

Glow Pebbles 6 years ago

An excellent well thought out piece, which no doubt will be very useful to many.

Best Regards

writerbill 6 years agofrom pennsylvania

This may be the best Hubpage ive read since joining. Alot of good information. Once I started reading I couldn't stop. Thanks alot. I agree with much of what you wrote.

Sunganani 6 years ago

Thanks for the very informative hub. The myths you have laid out are so prevalent that I wonder why they get pushed on us "seekers".

I will be hubbing and squiding differently from now on.

Thanks.

potter121 6 years ago

Great info. Keep doing a great works

Mark Bruno 6 years agofrom New Jersey Shore

Thank you so much for the excellent information you have provided us. Very useful to me. Thanks for sharing !!

saksare 6 years agofrom Madera,CA

awsome hub....thanx alot for such great tips...=]

Author

charlemont 6 years agofrom Lithuania

Elizabeth, when it comes to backlinks every hubber chooses a way that suits best each particular case. For example, revenue sharing websites that allow for backlink placement aren't a bad source at all. Old good article marketing still works as well. Commenting on thematically related blogs? It never hurts. But first and foremost, the content should be valuable for visitors to link to it. This way part of promotion is outsourced to readers ;)

Elizabeth (MeMe) 6 years agofrom Live Oak, Fl.

I enjoyed this hub as well. I was wondering if you could do a hub on how to set up back links. I am having a real problem with that.

Michelle Scoggins 6 years agofrom Fresno, CA

Good information, I am fairly new and am getting a lot of stuff and your hub really contradicts what everyone else is stating is the tricks. I think good content is the key and time which you did say was true.

kandrawe 7 years agofrom Tropical Country

so informatif..thanks for your hub..

Sylvie Strong 7 years ago

Thank you for a very useful hub. I am bookmarking for for further reference.

Andrew0208 7 years agofrom Zion

Excellent! Well outlined and very informative.

twhite94 7 years ago

I really enjoyed this. My earnings have not been the best since joining hubpages, but I haven't really targeted topics that would generate a large income. Either way I am enjoying the whole experience. Thank you for the great write up, and I look forward to more of these!

missymoo 7 years agofrom Kent, UK

I really liked this - it gave me some real food for thought which is always good. Well done on your success!

Sue S. 7 years ago

Thanks for this hub. I've been dealing with ~ battling? ~ all of these myths but had doubts. "Maybe they ARE true and I just can't get the hang of it...." or, "Maybe these ARE true but I keep being one step behind the hottest trend...." Your hub gave me hope.

Mark 7 years agofrom Alabama,USA

Very well thought out hub, and very easy to understand.

I wish you only the best

2005Fleet 7 years agofrom Sunny Florida

Very helpful for a newbie.

Rismayanti 7 years agofrom Tropical Island

exellent.. you give all the truth lesson for me as new hubber. thank you... i will follow

islandbutterfly 7 years ago

Thanks for an informative and well written page! I'm a new hubber and I found your advice very helpful. I'll put this to good use as I continue to establish myself here and hopefully do well because of it. All the best to you!

Beth Morey 7 years agofrom Montana

This hub is full of great information. Thank you for sharing!

Sherry Vacik 7 years agofrom Prague, Czech Republic

I completely agree with you. People get so very caught up in the "get rich now" mindset that they only pay attention to the myths you wrote about here, then become frustrated and burned out. They end up quitting HP too soon.

I'm still pretty new at this and see that it takes time and effort to gain credibility and to create useful information for those people searching online for help, advice, and insight to their questions. My intent is to make money on HP, but only by providing the best information possible to help others.

Thanks for sharing your ideas here and blowing down these myths!

Glenn Stok 7 years agofrom Long Island, NY

Very good information with a new way of looking at things. I'm glad I read your views on this.

Cassandra Mantis 7 years agofrom UK and Nerujenia

A cogent and intelligent Hub on a great subject! My favourite subject in fact! I am gonna be re-visiting this - I just know it. Great Hub. Cheers!

northernimpressio 7 years agofrom Thompson, MB

Thanks for your input, I have just published my first hub and will find this very useful

zinneryone 7 years agofrom Plano, TX

Very solid hub! I am starting to research how to make money with hubpages and I see that I still have a lot to learn!

Marisa thanks for stopping by! Quality hubs make a big deal in the eyes of visitors and search engines alike.

Marisa Wright 7 years agofrom Sydney

Spot on, Charlemont. I'm still learning what works on HubPages but if you listen to Nelle, content really is the key. She's now writing Hubs over 1,000 words - and she's earning $1,000 a month, so she must be doing something right!

Andrea 7 years agofrom Italy

I've found this hub pretty interesting. I'm a hubber two weeks old, so I have no advices to share, but I have begun to think if going for volume is the right way. Maybe I would not be able to write one or more hub a day with good original content. As I said I'm a complete beginner but I think going for a ratio like yours, an average of followers ten or twenty times your hubs is a good indicator of quality.

I'd better follow you. I guess there are a lot of imteresting things to learn.:)

floating mind 7 years agofrom Chicago, Illinois

Thanks for the information. I think I will bookmark this hub, so that I can read it again to make sure the information seeks in.

Paul Scanlon 7 years agofrom Birmingham, UK

Great article. There's much myth about Hubpages. This has helped clear alot of it up.

cymbiotica 7 years ago

I like a lot of what you said there, most of it all good general SEO tips. I am uncertain about the backlinking to hubpages idea myself though.

hetulips 7 years agofrom Ahmedabad, India

Excellent blog very well laid out indeed. I wish mine were as good as yours. Keep up the good work. Take a look a t mine and tell me what you think

Take care and have a happy life.

Hetul

maryladd 7 years ago

hey, I liked it. thank you for yoyr hub..it was easy to read and right to the point..you answered my questions I didn't even know I was curious about..come visit my hubs, maryladd

sacredcow 7 years agofrom india

this is good one.i will follow while writing hubpages

DonnyBoy 7 years agofrom Western New York

Groovy!

Saurabh G 7 years agofrom Nagpur

Great Hub! I am surprised that you earn that much from few hubs when i earn only pennies per day. Hope you would share secrets.

Rubes 7 years agofrom Somwhere up high

Great Hub! I couldn't agree more. Quality is key to a successful hub.

Rubes 7 years agofrom Somwhere up high

Great Hub! I couldn't agree more. Quality is key to a successful hub.

Michelle Cesare 7 years agofrom New York

Hello Charlemont,

I liked your Hub. Interesting how people view things differently. I feel you have many good points.

I'm writing a comment here so you can view my profile. I learned from a Hubber Helen Cater which gave me great advice on how to find the Highest paying keywords and the most searched keywords. I thought you would find it interesting. OK, have a great day. Thanks for being a Hubber.

mailxpress

Samantha Red 7 years ago

Thanks for clearing up a lot of questions for me.

rstevens89 7 years agofrom Kansas City, MO

This really helped me in trying to figure out how to make hubpages work for me. Thank you.

jacobkuttyta 7 years agofrom Delhi, India

Good info. Thanks

Charm Baker 7 years agofrom Los Angeles, California

Greetings - This was not only great advice but nicely put together. You are extremely right about appearance. I'm one of those persons who like visuals, and though I write quality hubs that typically "float" in the 60 to 85 score range, I have a habit of getting heavy-handed on the images. Sometimes just plain information, straight to the point, is a whole lot more effective. Thanks again.

Roffi Grandiosa 7 years agofrom Bandung, Indonesia

Thats serious amount of money. I'm a hub newbie and hope my adsense increase. So far I still think hubpages is a myth (but anyway I only joined this site for 2 days).

nell rose 7 years ago

I have just started writing my first Hub, and this was very helpful to stop me making any mistakes before i start. Thanks

SUBRAMANIANR 7 years ago

I am just entering into a new world of Hubs.Have started building my hubpages.Shall try to establish my credibility.

racool 7 years ago

Myth: Colour and animation settings have no impact on the interests of the visitors to a hub.

Truth: It is always considered that seeing is believing. So the more a hub looks attractive, the more it is likely to boost up the sales. Colour and animation should be selected very meticulously to ensure smooth and speedy progress towards success.

ajparker 7 years agofrom North Carolina

Good info. I think a key part of it is the topics you choose to write on as well as the quality and depth of the hubs.

zsikder1 7 years ago

you are right but it is very essential to put your published links of hubpages on various social bookmarking sites for getting huge quantities traffic and it is very important to to get clicked in keeping extra cash into your pocket, as more visitors come, more chances to get clicked.

itsjusmeli 7 years agofrom USA

Very helpful article for a newbie. Thanks for sharing!

free4india 8 years ago

One of the best..... no doubt....

ChRiiStiOn 8 years agofrom Cape Cod Mass

very cool and informative hub. thank u (=

stuart747 8 years agofrom Colchester, Essex, UK

a very good hub that has helped me out, thank you for the advice

FaithMarie 8 years ago

Very well written, and a great resource for a novice at hubpages. Thank you!

Barry Rutherford 8 years agofrom Queensland Australia

very good advice well done !

deepestwisdom 8 years agofrom England

Great thoughts on some of the best ways to make money with Hubs, especially that we need to be patient and let quality work pay off over time.

Lawrie 8 years agofrom London, England

Many thanks for the advice given in this hub. It was a truly good read.

kblogs 8 years agofrom NYC

This is a really informative and great article. The one thing I disagree slightly with you on is high paying keywords. There is a proper way to do keyword research (whcih obviously has nothing to do with reading articles from people who have done the keyword research for you). Google has really useful tools from which you can pretty accurately determine the range give or take a little that you wil get paid and how much traffic you could get if you're doing well in the SERPS. I've written about it here if you want to take a look:

But aside, a really great hub. Thanks for posting all the useful info,

Ker

oderog 8 years agofrom Nairobi

Great information, these is really valuable for anybody considering hubpages for passive of income

timbrodt 8 years agofrom Omaha Nebraska area

Very well written and straight to the point. Thank you for a very informative hub.

my-success-guru 8 years agofrom Upstate NY

Great Tips!!!

Mizz Eb. 8 years agofrom UK

Thanks for taking the time (and patience) to write such a useful hub. You rock.

oderog 8 years agofrom Nairobi

Great article on hubpages, and useful information, thanks

RVDaniels 8 years agofrom Athens, GA

Honest and useful information. This hub is a gem. Thanks!

apeksha 8 years agofrom India.

No need to say anything as above comments shows how nicely you have written and sorted problems of many hubbers.

Thanks.

lilolladystuff 8 years ago

This article was very helpful. Soon I will be ready to do my first Hub. Thanks.

Jeegh 8 years ago

very confusing article...hard to understand

Nuriramadhan 8 years agofrom @nuriramadhan

I wonder is this with only 30 hubs you do all that magical thing,wow,that should be a really powerfull hubs you do upthere

dennisfreeworld 8 years agofrom Nigeria

It great to know this .

Isong Dennis

gothicjunk 8 years agofrom Waverly, NY

Nice Hub!

McCord 8 years agofrom Arizona

I'm new around these parts and I really appreicated your 'no nonsense' and straight forward hub. Thanks, hopefully I can make money using keywords like you do in the near future. Thanks.

Sherry 8 years ago

Great information for newbies. Thank you!

Info Help 8 years agofrom Chicago

Hi Charlemont!

Great hub! You provided some great information in this hub, thank you! I have started a website with my husband http://simpleadsense.com and it is dedicated to assisting people in finding out how to make money with Google AdSense. Check out my hubs that I have posted as well as our site and let us know what you think. We love feedback!!!!

Ralph Deeds 8 years agofrom Birmingham, Michigan

Thanks. Well done.

sonu4405 8 years ago

Good info

dloadhub 8 years ago

Hello i am new here..good information.

JPSO138 8 years agofrom Cebu, Philippines, International

Very interesting indeed. I love all the things you have written. I am learning from them.

santoion 8 years ago

Very good info ! Thank You for sharing !

Darren 8 years ago

This is a really great hub, thanks for the advice and words of wisdom.